Global warming stands for warming the whole earth. Earth’s climate records show a cyclic change between warmer and colder periods in the last millions of years. Just by looking at the sediment cores we retrieved during our cruise one can see yellow and dark brown band in sequence. This shows a cyclic change in environmental factors in earth’s history. Scientists well established that we are in a warming period which may be part of the natural cycle and/or amplified by human activity.

The effects of global warming are very visible in the Polar Regions, both south and north. Permafrost is melting, ice cover is shrinking etc.

Scientists try to find out how global warming will affect our overall living conditions on earth. One thing is for sure, regardless what we believe in how much human activity contributes to global warming, nobody would like to live in a polluted environment, breathing dirty air and seeing dead fish in stinky rivers. Connecting environmental awareness, laws and behavior to scientific proof that we cause the global warming is not an option. We will expire of unknown illnesses, living very unhappy, breathing poison air, becoming extinct before the warm climate record of our period shows up as a sediment layer on the ocean floor.